Price Per Square Foot Construction Cost for Multi Story Office Buildings
Time again to look at the current construction market activity and analyze construction costs per square foot for various types of office buildings. How much does it cost to build an office building? Below is some data from RSMeans construction cost data that we keep a close eye on in order to estimate construction costs for all of our office building projects. This data is sorted by region from the most expensive to the least expensive.
price per square foot construction cost for two to four story office building
For the most common office building size, two to four stories tall, the range is from just over $130 per square foot in Winston-Salem to over $230 per square foot in New York. The spread here is largely due to the local cost of labor and regulations that allow various construction types that are allowed in low rise construction. For example, in some cases where wood frame construction is still allowed, depending on location and occupancy, this would help to keep costs lower. In areas that are restricted to non-flammable construction, price per square foot will go up.
By taking advantage of savings provided by vertical construction, you will see approximately a 4% savings in cost per square foot by increasing the stories to between five and ten stories. While one might expect a larger savings for that economy of scale, several new requirements come with the mid-rise building that are often not dealt with on the low rise buildings. For example, elevator shafts and service corridors get more complicated as well as HVAC systems.
Price per square foot construction cost for five to ten story office building
The geographic spread in cost per square foot is identical to the low-rise data. This is still principally driven by local factors such as labor costs and local regulatory requirements.
Finally, the high rise buildings see the most economic cost per square foot. For buildings between eleven and twenty stories tall, there is approximately an 11% savings over the mid rise buildings and 15% over low rise. this is largely due to the fact that similar elevator, HVAC and service equipment requirements are required for mid and high rise, resulting in more economy of scale for going up.
price per square foot construction cost for eleven to twenty story office building
Again, the geographic spread is still the same, telling us that the cost per square foot is very sensitive to geographic location. Note that over twenty stories starts getting into more unique building characteristics that will drive costs in various ways. For more information on estimating the cost of your office building during the early planning stages, contact any of us here at EVstudio and we can help scope the right size project for your pro forma.
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Dear Sirs
Could you please tell me what's the difference between "price per sq.ft construction"? And "price per sq.ft operations" in medical plaza buildings?
Thanks
Hello Jose,
The construction cost per square foot is the direct costs for the building inistial construction, from the foundation to the roof, and including interior finishes, but not movable furniture, fixtures or other equipment that have no permanent connection to the structure of the building or utilities. So if the total costs to build a 10,000 square foot building was $2,000,000, then the cost per square foot would be $200 per square foot.
Operations costs are entirely different expenses, but are also often expressed in terms of square feet. These are annual expenses necessary to run the building. Typical operating costs will include maintenance costs, common utility costs, insurance, security, trash removal, property taxes and any other operating expenses that the building may have. If the total annual expenses for that same 10,000 square foot building was $60,000, then the operating cost would be $6 per square foot (per year). These costs fluctuate from year to year and are typically passed on to tenants in a triple net lease. It is important to understand these costs in a rental scenario as they are added to the base rent (which is also expressed in terms of square feet) to get to a total gross rent figure.